Collected Stories (63 page)

The rabbi stopped reading in an orderly fashion. He would take out a book, open it at the middle, run through a few lines, and replace it on the shelf. No matter where he opened, he encountered a lie. All books had one thing in common: they avoided the essential, spoke vaguely, and gave different names to the same object. They knew neither how grass grew nor what light was, how heredity worked, the stomach digested, the brain thought, how weak nations grew strong, nor how the strong perished. Even though these scholars wrote thick books about the distant galaxies, they hadn’t yet discovered what went on a mile beneath the crust of the earth.

The rabbi turned pages and gaped. He would lay his forehead on the edge of the table and nap for an instant. “Woe to me, I have no more strength.” Every night, the coal dealer tried to persuade the rabbi to return to his own village. He would say, “You will collapse and they won’t even know what to write on your headstone.”

IX

Late one night when Hinde Shevach slept, she was awakened by steps in the corridor. Who creeps around in the middle of the night, Hinde Shevach wondered. Since her brother had left, it was as silent in the house as in a ruin. Hinde Shevach got up, put on a house coat and slippers. She opened a crack in the door and noticed a light in her brother’s room. She walked over and saw the rabbi. His gaberdine was torn, his shirt was unbuttoned, his skullcap was crumpled. The expression on his face was entirely altered. He was bent like an old man. In the middle of the room stood a satchel.

Hinde Shevach wrung her hands. “Are my eyes deceiving me?”

“No.”

“Father in Heaven, they’re searching for you all over. May the thoughts that I had be scattered over the wastelands. They’re already writing about you in the newspapers.”

“So, well.”

“Where were you? Why did you leave? Why did you hide?”

The rabbi didn’t reply.

“Why didn’t you say you were leaving?” Hinde Shevach asked despondently.

The rabbi dropped his head and didn’t answer.

“We thought you were dead, God forbid. I telegraphed Simcha David but no answer came. I wanted to sit the seven days of mourning for you. Heaven save me! The whole town is in an uproar. They invented the most gruesome things. They even informed the police. A policeman came to ask me for your description and all the rest of it.”

“Too bad.”

“Did you see Simcha David?” Hinde Shevach asked after a hesitation.

“Yes. No.”

“How is he making out?”

“Eh.”

Hinde Shevach gulped. “You’re as white as chalk, all in tatters. They dreamed up such stories that I was ashamed to show my face. Letters and telegrams came.”

“Well …”

“You can’t just get rid of me like this.” Hinde Shevach changed her tone. “Speak clearly. Why did you do it? You’re not just a street urchin, you’re the rabbi of Bechev.”

“No more rabbi.”

“God have mercy. There will be bedlam. Wait, I’ll bring you a glass of milk.”

Hinde Shevach withdrew. The rabbi heard her go down the steps. He seized his beard and swayed. A huge shadow wavered along the wall and ceiling. After a while Hinde Shevach returned. “There is no milk.”

“Nu.”

“I won’t go until you tell me why you left,” Hinde Shevach said.

“I wanted to know what the heretics say.”

“What do they say?”

“There are no heretics.”

“Is that so?”

“The whole world worships idols,” the rabbi muttered. “They invent gods and they serve them.”

“The Jews also?”

“Everybody.”

“Well, you’ve lost your mind.” Hinde Shevach remained standing for a while and stared, then she walked back to her bedroom.

The rabbi lay down on his bed fully clothed. He felt his strength leaving him—not ebbing away but all at once, rapidly. A light he never knew was there flickered in his brain. His hands and feet grew numb.

His head lay heavy on the pillow. After a time, the rabbi lifted an eyelid. The candle had burned out. A pre-dawn moon, jagged and dimmed by fog, shone through the window. In the east, the sky reddened. “Something is there,” the rabbi murmured.

The war between the rabbi of Bechev and God had come to an end.

R
EB
N
AFTALI
H
OLISHITZER
, the community leader in Krasnobród, was left in his old age with no children. One daughter had died in childbirth and the other in a cholera epidemic. A son had drowned when he tried to cross the San River on horseback. Reb Naftali had only one grandchild—a girl, Akhsa, an orphan. It was not the custom for a female to study at a yeshiva, because “the King’s daughter is all glorious within” and Jewish daughters are all the daughters of kings. But Akhsa studied at home. She dazzled everyone with her beauty, wisdom, and diligence. She had white skin and black hair; her eyes were blue.

Reb Naftali managed an estate that had belonged to the Prince Czartoryski. Since he owed Reb Naftali twenty thousand guldens, the prince’s property was a permanent pawn, and Reb Naftali had built for himself a water mill and a brewery and had sown hundreds of acres with hops. His wife, Nesha, came from a wealthy family in Prague. They could afford to hire the finest tutors for Akhsa. One taught her the Bible, another French, still another the pianoforte, and a fourth dancing. She learned everything quickly. At eight, she was playing chess with her grandfather. Reb Naftali didn’t need to offer a dowry for her marriage, since she was heir to his entire fortune.

Matches were sought for her early, but her grandmother was hard to please. She would look at a boy proposed by the marriage brokers and say, “He has the shoulders of a fool,” or, “He has the narrow forehead of an ignoramus.”

One day Nesha died unexpectedly. Reb Naftali was in his late seventies and it was unthinkable that he remarry. Half his day he devoted to religion, the other half to business. He rose at daybreak and pored over the Talmud and the Commentaries and wrote letters to community elders. When a man was sick, Reb Naftali went to comfort him. Twice a week he visited the poorhouse with Akhsa, who carried a contribution of soup and groats herself. More than once, Akhsa, the pampered and scholarly, rolled up her sleeves and made beds there.

In the summer, after midday sleep, Reb Naftali ordered his britska harnessed and he rode around the fields and village with Akhsa. While they rode, he discussed business, and it was known that he listened to her advice just as he had listened to her grandmother’s.

But there was one thing that Akhsa didn’t have—a friend. Her grandmother had tried to find friends for her; she had even lowered her standards and invited girls from Krasnobród. But Akhsa had no patience with their chatter about clothes and household matters. Since the tutors were all men, Akhsa was kept away from them, except for lessons. Now her grandfather became her only companion. Reb Naftali had met famous noblemen in his lifetime. He had been to fairs in Warsaw, Crakow, Danzig, and Königsberg. He would sit for hours with Akhsa and tell her about rabbis and miracle workers, about the disciples of the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi, quarrels in the Sejm, the caprices of the Zamojskis, the Radziwills, and the Czartoryskis—their wives, lovers, courtiers. Sometimes Akhsa would cry out, “I wish you were my fiancé, not my grandfather!” and kiss his eyes and his white beard.

Reb Naftali would answer, “I’m not the only man in Poland. There are plenty like me, and young to boot.”

“Where, Grandfather? Where?”

After her grandmother’s death, Akhsa refused to rely on anyone else’s judgment in the choice of a husband—not even her grandfather’s. Just as her grandmother saw only bad, Reb Naftali saw only good. Akhsa demanded that the matchmakers allow her to meet her suitor, and Reb Naftali finally consented. The young pair would be brought together in a room, the door would be left open, and a deaf old woman servant would stand at the threshold to watch that the meeting be brief and without frivolity. As a rule, Akhsa stayed with the young man not more than a few minutes. Most of the suitors seemed dull and silly. Others tried to be clever and made undignified jokes. Akhsa dismissed them abruptly. How strange, but her grandmother still expressed her opinion. Once, Akhsa heard her say clearly, “He has the snout of a pig.” Another time, she said, “He talks like the standard letter book.”

Akhsa knew quite well that it was not her grandmother speaking. The dead don’t return from the other world to comment on prospective fiancés. Just the same, it was her grandmother’s voice, her style. Akhsa wanted to talk to her grandfather about it, but she was afraid he would think her crazy. Besides, her grandfather longed for his wife, and Akhsa didn’t want to stir up his grief.

When Reb Naftali Holishitzer realized that his granddaughter was driving away the matchmakers, he was troubled. Akhsa was now past her eighteenth year. The people in Krasnobród had begun to gossip—she was demanding a knight on a white horse or the moon in heaven; she would stay a spinster. Reb Naftali decided not to give in to her whims any more but to marry her off. He went to a yeshiva and brought back with him a young man named Zemach, an orphan and a devout scholar. He was dark as a gypsy, small, with broad shoulders. His sidelocks were thick. He was nearsighted and studied eighteen hours a day. The moment he reached Krasnobród, he went to the study house and began to sway in front of an open volume of the Talmud. His sidelocks swayed, too. Students came to talk with him, and he spoke without lifting his gaze from the book. He seemed to know the Talmud by heart, since he caught everyone misquoting.

Akhsa demanded a meeting, but Reb Naftali replied that this was conduct befitting tailors and shoemakers, not a girl of good breeding. He warned Akhsa that if she drove Zemach away he would disinherit her. Since men and women were in separate rooms during the engagement party, Akhsa had no chance of seeing Zemach until the marriage contract was to be signed. She looked at him and heard her grandmother say, “They’ve sold you shoddy goods.”

Her words were so clear it seemed to Akhsa that everyone should have heard them, but no one had. The girls and women crowded around her, congratulating her and praising her beauty, her dress, her jewelry. Her grandfather passed her the contract and a quill, and her grandmother cried out, “Don’t sign!” She grabbed Akhsa’s elbow and a blot formed on the paper.

Reb Naftali shouted, “What have you done!”

Akhsa tried to sign, but the pen fell from her hand. She burst into tears. “Grandfather, I can’t.”

“Akhsa, you shame me.”

“Grandfather, forgive me.” Akhsa covered her face with her hands. There was an outcry. Men hissed and women laughed and wept. Akhsa cried silently. They half led, half carried her to her room and put her on her bed.

Zemach exclaimed, “I don’t want to be married to this shrew!”

He pushed through the crowd and ran to get a wagon back to the yeshiva. Reb Naftali went after him, trying to pacify him with words and money, but Zemach threw Reb Naftali’s banknotes to the ground. Someone brought his wicker trunk from the inn where he had stayed. Before the wagon pulled away, Zemach cried out, “I don’t forgive her, and God won’t, either.”

For days after that, Akhsa was ill. Reb Naftali Holishitzer, who had been successful all his life, was not accustomed to failure. He became sick; his face took on a yellow pallor. Women and girls tried to comfort Akhsa. Rabbis and elders came to visit Reb Naftali, but he got weaker as the days passed. After a while, Akhsa gained back her strength and left her sickbed. She went to her grandfather’s room, bolting the door behind her. The maid who listened and spied through the keyhole reported that she had heard him say, “You are mad!”

Akhsa nursed her grandfather, brought him his medicine and bathed him with a sponge, but the old man developed an inflammation of the lungs. Blood ran from his nose. His urine stopped. Soon he died. He had written his will years before and left one-third of his estate to charity and the rest to Akhsa.

According to the law, one does not sit shivah in mourning after the death of a grandfather, but Akhsa went through the ceremony anyway. She sat on a low stool and read the book of Job. She ordered that no one be let in. She had shamed an orphan—a scholar—and caused the death of her grandfather. She became melancholy. Since she had read the story of Job before, she began to search in her grandfather’s library for another book to read. To her amazement, she found a Bible translated into Polish—the New Testament as well as the Old. Akhsa knew it was a forbidden book, but she turned the pages anyway. Had her grandfather read it, Akhsa wondered. No, it couldn’t be. She remembered that on the Gentile feast days, when holy icons and pictures were carried in processions near the house, she was not allowed to look out of the window. Her grandfather told her it was idolatry. She wondered if her grandmother had read this Bible. Among the pages she found some pressed cornflowers—a flower her grandmother had often picked. Grandmother came from Bohemia; it was said that her father had belonged to the Sabbatai Zevi sect. Akhsa recalled that Prince Czartoryski used to spend time with her grandmother when he visited the estate, and praised the way she spoke Polish. If she hadn’t been a Jewish girl, he said, he would have married her—a great compliment.